Golf R,
I think you are wrong to say that companies only lease when they are cash strapped, it is actually sound financial solution to keep your cash flowing by leasing rather than cash spent on capital assets such as a car which have depreciation. When leasing depreciation is not taken into account whereas if you had purchased the car, it would. The other advantage of leasing is that technically the budget stays the same but you can get a new car every 2 years or time frame agreed in the contract. The most important thing for a company is maintenance as well. So if the car was leased, all maintenance will be done by the leasing company. So thats another obvious advantage...
HM